""I am not afraid of ghosts. I am afraid of what they remember.""
When Imara Thornwood inherits Ashwood Estate, she expects dust, silence, and old books. What she finds instead is a house alive with memory-and women who were erased for loving other women, for knowing too much, for refusing to be small.
As a Black lesbian scholar in Victorian England, Imara has spent her life documenting other women's courage while hiding her own. At Ashwood, the past refuses to stay buried. Spirits whisper from mirrors and corridors. Forbidden research reveals a centuries-old curse. And at the center of it all is Seraphine Ashwood-a woman neither living nor dead, bound to the house by betrayal, blood magic, and unfinished longing.
Drawn together by shared rage, desire, and recognition, Imara and Seraphine form a dangerous bond that blurs the line between scholarship and intimacy, rescue and obsession. To break the curse imprisoning Ashwood's women, Imara must challenge the very foundations of patriarchal control-and decide how much of herself she's willing to risk for love, truth, and freedom.
Because some houses don't just haunt you. They choose you.
- Sapphic Gothic Romance - Haunted House - Queer Historical Fiction - Ghostly Women - Forbidden Love - Dark Academia - Slow-Burn Attraction - Feminist Gothic Horror
